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Sentences (#4)

This exquisite Scott Alexander sentence probably bends my rules in various directions (but January is going to be a tangled (or dynamically unstable) month in any case):

It seems neither uncommon nor unexpected that if you charge a group with eliminating an evil that’s really hard to eliminate, they usually end up mildly tweaking the evil into a form that benefits them, then devoting most of their energy to punishing people who complain.

(The whole — long — post is a masterpiece of Scott Alexanderness. Read it alongside Ligotti, and the cross-echoes are notable. Extreme liberals are horroristic maniacs who haven’t yet given up for good.)

OK. Tried reading it. Kept zoning in and out. Not an issue with writing style, but topic. I find it difficult maintain concentration on discussions when the solutions is blindingly obvious to me. Feminists are vile, feminism is hysterically psychotic, and anyone advocating it should be ritually executed for the good of any remaining civilization. Problem is, the only people who seem to have grasped the seriousness of the situation are spasticated Muslims.

The Jew angle was kinda interesting though, and raises the question: how much of this is the product of Jewish cultural pathology? I don’t know any neurotic jewfeminerds like this in real life, and would hope that they would be expelled from the territory of any sane civilization on principle, rather than being allowed to castrate it. If not, well, there’s always the global jihad.

Denswend Reply:January 2nd, 2015 at 1:57 pm

I find the cat-and-mouse show Scottie puts on when he intuitively knows the answer and that he cannot say it outloud amusing. Despite knowing how progressive dialectics work, and understanding them with dazzling brilliance, he still clings to the idea (or the “motte”) that feminism is for equality, and that equality is something good. He needs a good and sudden shock to snap him out from that daze.

Jay Money Reply:January 2nd, 2015 at 2:16 pm

Everything Scott writes is probably unreadable to most. It is one of admin’s most noble virtues that he reads it for us, and points out the good parts – so that we don’t have to.

max Reply:January 2nd, 2015 at 2:27 pm

SA’s writing style is to avoid stepping on _anyone’s_ toes… note the comments section, he got in trouble this time because he occasionally omitted “maybe”s, “some”s, and “in my experiences”s. Basically, the polar opposite of Jim.

Erebus Reply:January 2nd, 2015 at 2:33 pm

@Max —
I honestly had a hard time taking someofthecomments on his post seriously. Sheer vitriol from some, pure inanity from others.

You aren’t reading it right. Scott’s ability to completely identify the problem but still, quite sincerely, ritually abase himself to it at the same time, makes him worthy of connoisseurship.

It takes a once in a generation talent to write long sincere *thoughtful* screeds pointing out that baby sacrifice is lowering the birth rate and causing family trauma, though of course he fully understands and endorses that Lord Moloch must be sated with the only food acceptable unto him.

peter connor Reply:January 2nd, 2015 at 9:41 pm

Yes, there was a much shorter version; SJW feminists are crazy, evil, completely disconnected from reality, and will destroy western society if they get their way.

Anonymous Reply:January 3rd, 2015 at 1:07 am

Scott is being borderline satirically charitable, as is his thing, and it’s good to have this there as a “just checking” to see if any non-evil progressives actually exist. One might otherwise assume there is a silent majority of level-headed leftists waiting for the olive branch.

R. Reply:January 3rd, 2015 at 8:55 am

and anyone advocating it should be ritually executed for the good of any remaining civilization.

After reading Alexander’s piece, the non-Jewishness of NRx is really striking me. Dominant currents seem Anglo-Saxon and traditionalist Catholic (ain’t that something), rounded out by a number of Slavs (Southern ones especially, again, ain’t that something). Yes, Moldberg notwithstanding — and he’s only a Mischling anyway!

I also have to comment on how outlandish everything about Alexander and his “grey bonobo polyamorous rationalist” ilk seems to me. It is only the extensive time I’ve spent learning English and living in the New World that lets me even interface with these thoughts on any understandable level. The kind of stuff that Alexander, his girlfriend and the rest of them write about, and the way they write about it, is bizarre to the European part of me, incomprehensible to the Slavic part of me, and disgusting to the Catholic part of me. My peasant grandparents would gape. My parents would scratch their heads. Some of my peers in the Old World would diplomatically try to exclude Grey Bonobos from polite conversation, and others would call them faggots and punch them. There is one word they would use which I can only roughly translate as “sicko,” since it is especially potent in its dual connotations of both social abnormality and disease.

The Jew Angle — is this what the unfiltered Jewish essence looks like? Is this how my ancestors felt looking at rabbis?

Jewish (specifically a kind of Ashkenazi) neuroticism seems to be a real phenomenon, yes. Besides rare genetic diseases, mental disorders also seem to accompany the heightened Ashkenazi intelligence. Yet, as a Jew myself (with a lot of Slavic blood), American Jews specifically are those of my tribe that truly annoy me; maybe it’s the Israeli view of things, but the majority of American Jews seem to entirely enjoy the Exile and wallow in it like a pig in mud. Regarding the historic European hate of Jews… It’s instinctive, a hate conditioned by hundreds of years of jealousy.

The presence (social dominance?) of the more neurotypical Sephardim over the mentats… er… Ashkenazim probably helps with that.

Y.Ilan Reply:January 2nd, 2015 at 9:37 pm

I am Israeli. Obviously, the myths Europeans invented about the Jews, the way they looked at us back in the Middle Ages, is completely inapplicable towards Israel. We had enough of being the “pitiful, degenerate” victims and took things into our own hands, that’s the whole point of Zionism. I quite enjoy hearing the platitudes of soft-hearted Europeans when we decide to act in order to secure our place.

@Garr
You do have a point, as this may be construed as “selling-out,” but I’m simply being honest. I also get annoyed by Mizrahi music, so what? All Jews are part of my tribe either way, and they’re entirely welcome to leave the Exile and join me here.

Y.Ilan Reply:January 2nd, 2015 at 9:43 pm

@Hanfeizi
I wouldn’t say the Sephardim have “social dominance” here, but a lot of Israelis nowadays are a mix of Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi. I would say that Ashkenazim still have an edge in term of social dominance, but it’s getting to a point where you can’t entirely tell who’s who.

R. Reply:January 3rd, 2015 at 9:18 am

>>Israelis do not strike me as typically “Jewish” in the historical sense that Europeans imagined, i.e. neurotic, pitiful, degenerate, etc. There are obvious reasons for this.<<

Lolwhut?

That's not really how Europeans thought of Jews. Firstly the language is Freudian, which hasn' been absorbed into the majority worldview since late 20th century, secondly, Jews were seen as typically as money-grubbing, over-ambitious, dishonest, unchristian.. etc.

Part of the world I live in has very few Jews, but those that are there are usually quite prominent. There's 10x more Jewologists* than actual Jews.

*the person who is intensely interested in finding out who's a Jew and who's not and holds strong stereotypical views. I have an uncle like that. The ironic thing is that he looks like one. Can't be though, he was born to a certifed Aryan marriage. Unless my grandma cheated.

Alex Reply:January 3rd, 2015 at 7:00 pm

Y.Ilan:

Obviously, the myths Europeans invented about the Jews, the way they looked at us back in the Middle Ages, is completely inapplicable towards Israel. We had enough of being the “pitiful, degenerate” victims and took things into our own hands, that’s the whole point of Zionism.

I’m not a Religious Zionist; I was raised in a very secular family and never considered religion very seriously. Anyways, I don’t know how much the Christians feared Jews back in the day, although the blood libel does seem to point towards a sort of horror. Maybe a fear of some sort of unknown, Satanic forces at play, not so much a fear of Jewish strength.

R. Reply:January 3rd, 2015 at 9:12 am

>>bonobo<<
Isn't Alexander asexual or something? The latest post of his suggests so.

“The goal of feminism is to remove all constraints on female sexuality while maximally restricting male sexuality”

Heartiste continues:

“The goal doesn’t have to be consciously intended for it to be operative. Most feminists aren’t thinking, “I want to enlarge the sphere of acceptable expressions of female sexuality and shrink the sphere of acceptable expressions of male sexuality.” But conscious awareness isn’t necessary for subconscious desires to percolate up through the prefrontal cortex and get rationalized as a moral crusade for an invisible sex inequality.”

Conceiving sexual power as a zero sum game, feminists instinctively seek to maximise their own power while simultaneously limiting that of their opponents. It should be no surprise that this process is ruthless and vindictive, with feminists seeking to leave no chips on the table.

Funnily enough, I read most of that paper years ago as research for an artwork I was making which dealt with the ‘male gaze’. I think you’re correct that the actual situation is much more complex than the Heartiste definition suggests. But I still think feminists seek to maximise their own power through closing down acceptable avenues for male sexuality, even if they become more fragmented in relation to how they treat female sexuality. For instance, seeking to make prostitution illegal seems to me to be more about criminalising male sexuality than genuinely helping women, who continue to do it anyway only under worse conditions.

If I may venture to point out, women still do most of the restraining of each other’s female sexuality — the biggest “slut shamers” are other women. Some of them, who tend to describe themselves as “feminists,” have just begun attempting to restrain male sexuality too — unsurprising in an age where men increasing behave like women.

I’m surprised SA didn’t quote this bit (probably because he’s still holding on to his faith by a thread):

> … as Laurie Penny maintained, my problems weren’t caused by feminism, but rather by the Patriarchy. One thing I’ve learned these last few days is that, as many people use it, the notion of “Patriarchy” is sufficiently elastic as to encompass almost anything about the relations between the sexes that is, or has ever been, bad or messed up—regardless of who benefits, who’s hurt, or who instigated it. So if you tell such a person that your problem was not caused by the Patriarchy, it’s as if you’ve told a pious person that a certain evil wasn’t the Devil’s handiwork: the person has trouble even parsing what you said, since within her framework, “evil” and “Devil-caused” are close to synonymous. If you want to be understood, far better just to agree that it was Beelzebub and be done with it. This might sound facetious, but it’s really not: I believe in the principle of always adopting the other side’s terms of reference, whenever doing so will facilitate understanding and not sacrifice what actually matters to you. Smash the Patriarchy!

Aaronson finally saw clearly just what kind of monster he’s dealing with. His reaction? “Thank you sir, may I have another?”

You’re surprised the guy who asked a psychiatrist to chemically castrate him will sink this low? The more pertinent question is what kind of society we’re living in that permits men to demand their own castration out of fear/deference of/to women.

The problem with these people is that they deal with bullying by siding with the bully and analyzing whether they deserve to be destroyed. They typically conclude that the bully is confused, that they have in fact been really nice and given them their lunch money many times. This makes it worse.

Don’t you love it!
A Jewish prof (Lewin) at MIT gets in trouble. Another Jewish prof (Aaronson) comes to the rescue and then gets in trouble as well. Then another degenerate Jewish blogger (Scott A) tries to put things into perspective. To make things worse Scott keeps dropping references to the Nazis where none is warranted.

Don’t they realize most PC is the work of Jewish people trying to become the lead ethnie of the Anglosphere (50s-80s) and keeping their coveted alpha position (90s onward). Now that their PC has taken a life of its own and the victim are Jews these guys are freaking out. How long can this charade last???

Whether they realize it or not, they don’t have much interest in opposing a system that has benefited them so greatly. The charade will last until enough smart goy in the Anglosphere wake up and reject Jewish distortion and deception of our societies. This “revenge of the Jews” period we’re living through can’t go on forever. Perhaps they will devour themselves, as we’re seeing here.

One of the things that makes NRx interesting for me is its relatively balanced view of the Jews; not inherently anti-Semitic, but not bowing to their tribal influence machine, or unwilling to expose their crucial influence on the entire PC, anti-white gentile apparatus. It’s been a long time since these sort of ideas were discussed openly in the Anglosphere, and we have a historic opportunity to subvert the cultural machinery that created this situation, and undo its corrosive influence on its main victims (white male gentiles). As for people like Scott Alexander: cry me a fucking river, you degenerate!

The only reason feminists aren’t shooting nerds and taking their stuff is they wouldn’t get away with it. They have amply earned an assumption of bad faith, and Alexander’s unwillingness to admit as much is epistemic incompetence. Feminists very obviously don’t think nerds are human. Alexander insists on treating them as if they do, though.

You know what else works like pas d’ennemi à gauche? Status. Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

I would like to affirm the high quality of the meta-level sentence admin quoted (aside from the whole “what to do about feminism” question). It’s that kind of fact that ultimately lies behind all the mess.

Winning conditions are about the respect of some (usually inaccessible) ideal. The point is not to respect the ideal, but to put the blame on the other. This is why the fax, which basically imitates the moves of Opponent is winning : whatever mistake he does, the other has done it before.”

I’m glad the commenters here are as skeptical about the post overall as I am.

I read the whole thing, and I find SA’s writing style very impressive, but the essay left a bad taste in my mouth. I just can’t really be on board with people who one-dimensionalize human suffering the way this guy — any basically any progressive — does.

Pointing out feminist hypocrisy is fine and dandy (pretty easy, too), but I fail to see why anyone should ever go out of their way to accommodate the very precious sensibilities of people who would probably have intense, crippling neurosis problems no matter how society functioned. If all of the nerds are going to establish themselves by ganging up together and saying, “We’re just as emotional as women are!” then I honestly think the feminists aren’t totally wrong to spit upon them.